Whether you need to install anything for the Wi-Fi depends on the brand and model of the Wi-Fi chip. If that information is not readily available on the vendor's website, we can help you figure that out once you have the laptop and you have booted into Linux Mint (okay, my preference as Linux Mint has a couple of extra tools installed to help with this, as compared to Ubuntu).

Hopefully you don't need to install anything and it will just work. It will be handy though to have a network cable available so you can use your laptop with wired Internet if the Wi-Fi needs some work.

You can install Linux Mint without an Internet connection, but for best results it is recommend to have one during installation (even if just temporarily with wired Internet for the installation).

There are no special steps for installing an operating system on a computer that doesn't yet have an operating system. In fact it makes the installation easier, as there is no risk of accidentally overwriting the other operating system or such. If your laptop is certified for use with Windows 8, you may need to go into the BIOS and disable secure boot. I don't think that is the case though.

With a 2.4 Ghz Celeron processor I would venture that you won't have the best performance with a more demanding desktop environment like Ubuntu's Unity. I'd recommend Linux Mint 64-bit with MATE instead. It depends a bit also on what graphics card you have?

As for putting home on a separate partition, yes you can do that but it will complicate the installation a bit. I'd be happy to add the manual partitioning steps here if you want, but Linux Mint's recommended way of installing a newer release (http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/2) will have you overwrite that partition upon installing the newer release.

After discussing the finer points on another thread regarding Eee PC, MSI wind etc I read elsewhere on the forum about zoostorm and it seems like a decent buy. Time will tell. I didn't exactly break the bank but spent a little more than I planned, but happy there's no Windows.

xenopeek wrote:That processor has Intel HD Graphics 2000, and is a Sandy Bridge generation processor. Linux Mint 13 and 14 (or Ubuntu 12.04 and 12.10) should both run fine on this.

Thanks for the comprehensive reply, xenopeek.

So the graphic card should be able to handle both then? Damn, I'm terrible at choosing at the best of times.

I've been using Ubuntu for about four years and get on well with it but I like the sound of Mint too. Is MATE the desktop? I think I'll buy the mag this month with Mint on and try at the library or something. What do you think about the other ones like cinnamon etc?

So if need be I can use Ethernet connection to start me off if I have Wi-Fi difficulties? Does the laptop automatically configure a connection with the Ethernet?

I think I'll leave the Home partition well alone, I'll have enough work just installing Mint!

Yes, the graphics card should handle both fine. Should also handle any desktop environment you want I think (I have a Sandy Bridge processor, with the sightly faster Intel HD Graphics 3000 and it runs everything without problems).

Linux Mint is fully compatible with Ubuntu, so all the same programs (also from PPAs) are available.

MATE is indeed the desktop environment, which is based on GNOME 2 that you may know from Ubuntu before Unity became the default. I'm running Cinnamon myself, and if you want you should give it a go. It is awesome I'd recommend you use Linux Mint 14 64-bit with Cinnamon, as that has major improvements over Linux Mint 13.

If you're very unlucky your ethernet chip may also need a special driver, but most likely it will just work. Normally, all you need to do is plug in the network cable in your computer on one end and in your router or Cable/DSL modem on the other end. After you boot from the Linux Mint installation DVD or USB stick, it will automatically connect to the Internet.

If you need further support during or after installation, you're welcome to post here or join the Linux Mint forums for that. You'll find me there easily.

I noticed that it has a cd supplied that says 'device drivers and user manual'. What will the drivers be, and will I bother with this? I didn't expect to get anything like that because there's no OS installed.

I didn't bother with the disk and I've now installed Mint 14 Cinnamon 64- bit.

The installation has gone well, just a couple of things;

I can't set up the Wi-Fi, I've had a look in Network connections it asks for these details;

ssid; I have this, I think it's the bt hub name?

bssid: ?

device mac address; ?

cloned mac address; ?

MTU; ?

mode; infrastructure or ad-hoc ?

I've tried to set up Thunderbird (?) email, it's gone ok until it asks for username and password. Username is my email address and password is my bt yahoo password? I logged on to bt to double check and the password's fine.Thunderbird says either username or password incorrect?

xenopeek, I've tried to register for the Mint forum but can't complete as I can't seem to drag the necessary words to the right on the registration page?

You'll need the firmware for wireless chip set - Have a look on the CD, you never know they may have included it.

I had the same issue with wifi on my Dell Mini 9 Netboot with MINT 14 XCFE 32 bit. Installed Manjaro before finding a solution for Mint even though I'd ran an updated while wired to the internet expecting the firmware to be pulled down automatically like it does with Ubuntu.

I was only testing the steam client on Mint 14 which worked so wasn't that bothered about the wifi.

TheWizardofOdds wrote:I can't set up the Wi-Fi, I've had a look in Network connections it asks for these details;

You shouldn't have to do this. Once your Wi-Fi drivers are installed, the Network Manager (icon on your panel in the lower right) should give you a list of detected Wi-Fi networks and you can click the one to connect to. You'll be asked for its password only I think.

I suggest you open a terminal, and run the following command and share the output here. This will tell us what network interfaces you have. You can copy text to/from the terminal, see its Edit menu.

TheWizardofOdds wrote:I logged on to bt to double check and the password's fine.Thunderbird says either username or password incorrect?

BT Yahoo! has some help; I'd suggest trying following their "Use our quick and easy set-up guide" as they support Thunderbird for Mac and PC and it shouldn't be that different. Perhaps you need to give your full "username@foo.bar" email as username, or perhaps only the username part.

TheWizardofOdds wrote:xenopeek, I've tried to register for the Mint forum but can't complete as I can't seem to drag the necessary words to the right on the registration page?

Make sure you have enabled JavaScript in your browser (Edit > Preferences > Content > Enable JavaScript) and that you don't have any content blocking extensions active (like NoScript). I just tried, it should work for you. You click and hold with the left mouse button, then drag to the other column and release.